Indemnity
by RoseWithThorns1
Summary: *Sequel to Corrupt* Hermione's tortured by the idea that her unborn baby isn't Draco's, and maybe Voldemort isn't dead after all.... Read and Review!!
1. Interference

Disclaimer: I own nothing, and owe everything, to the much respected craftsmanship of the one and only J. K. Rowling.   
  
A/N: At the end of the chapter. Please read.  
  
INDEMNITY  
  
Chapter One  
  
She clamped her eyes shut, glistening tears trapped in a cringed expression. Her stomach turned and she exhaled silently through her nose. She could feel the nausea rising in her throat, but she would not succumb to it. Not now. Not here.   
  
Sweat began to bead on her forehead, willing her to calm her resistance and let what illness would pass to pour forth. But she refused. Her small hands moved over her unswollen womb, and she wondered if her fears were worth this torture. The knowledge that in seven months time she would bear a child to the next generation seized her composure and she bore silent tears to her Professor's vision. He gave his affirmation with a glance at the door, and she rose and left amidst stares.  
  
Tearing through corridors, she never quite made it to a stall, or even a room, and her body heaved its rejection of this new creation onto the stone floors. Clinging to the walls for support, she wrapped her arms around herself for a comfort she longed to receive from someone else. But she was alone, isolated in a cold environment far from prying eyes and warm enraptures. God she missed the silence. The blessed silence where she controlled herself and nothing depended on anyone else. The pure silence where she could rock herself into a blind stupor of rage or remorse or resilience and be none the wiser the second she heard a sound. The lonely silence where her frustrations and damnations were carried forth non-verbally into the thick curtains of her bed and dissipated into the air.  
  
Her nausea splashed the walls and stained her robes, and she strained to sit down steadily, eventually resolving to slide down to her knees. Warm, frightened tears streaked her cheeks. She didn't want this. It didn't matter to her the love that filled her when she thought of bearing his child. Nor did it matter the joy that cascaded her veins when she imagined that she contained the ability within herself to create life, and sustain it within her. At night, in his bed, they would smile at these musings. But in her reality, her solitary consciousness, she feared it. She would wander into daytime dreams of this prophetic child and startle herself to attention drenched in a clammy, cold, full-body sweat. She did not want this.  
  
Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she removed her robes, revealing a Hogwarts emblazoned sweater vest over a white Oxford shirt, tucked into a pleated knee-length skirt. Dignified. Above this weakness. Slytherin. Regaining her composure, sniffling back her inner pain, she grew to her full height, threw her robes over the mess, and walked undeniably impassioned to the dungeons.  
  
The cold did not fair her well, and she began to sway as the dampness soaked her skin. Nevertheless, she had a mission, and she moved blindly forward to the store cabinet, apparently unaware of the class she had interrupted. Severus Snape, not one to remove himself from his own gravity, swept past aisles in her shadow and reached the doors as instantaneously as she.  
  
"Please, Severus," she dropped her voice so that it was a mere passing breath to his ear. Her eyes glazed over and she shut them painfully. "Please."  
  
"No, Hermione," he whispered, just as beggingly. Clearing his throat, he assigned a book chapter to his third-years and enveloped the child in a cloak from his desk. He lead her to his private office, and sat her down as he knelt at her side.  
  
"I can't do this anymore. I can't Severus," she raspily argued. She willed herself not to shake her head, for the pounding and nausea had begun to return.  
  
He took her hand and held her close to him. Whispering the comfort that he would remain in the room, he walked to the fireplace, threw in a bit of Floo powder, and called for Draco Malfoy. A mere thirty seconds later he was by her side, just existing. Powerless.  
  
"Sir?" Draco questioned Severus, then glanced over to the chair in the center of the room, removed from all the chaos.  
  
Severus firmly grasped Draco's shoulder, then left them alone. This was not his to deal with. His journey would commence when the child was brought forth. His concern lay with the prophesy. It was young Malfoy's responsibility that the mother made it through as well.   
  
~~~~~^~~~~~^~~~~~@ RWT  
  
To be answered in the next chapter:  
  
*What has changed in Hermione's relationship with her professor that she may now call him Severus?  
  
*Where is Harry?  
  
To be answered eventually:  
  
*Can Draco help Hermione's fragile state of mind in this new situation?  
  
*Will this child be born?  
  
*What is the prophesy?  
  
*What are the consequences?  
  
~~~~~^~~~~~^~~~~~@ RWT  
  
I didn't plan to write a sequel. I didn't plan to jump into this again. But inspiration struck me, as it often does, and I'm compelled to see where this will go with a new vision and direction. Several things will make this different from "Corrupt". First of all, I've read all 5 books, which I  
  
hadn't even started during the predecessor. Secondly, I'm coming from a different position personally. I'm 18, a high school graduate, and facing the future. My former haunts have dissipated, clearing the road ahead, and allowing me to walk backwards to write this fic. Finally, I managed to perceive several canon facts that I had no way of knowing the first time around, such as Voldemort rising from a cauldron, and Harry being prophesied to kill Voldemort or be killed.   
  
This is an AU fiction because the cast is in their 6th year, and are 17 years old. To pick up where we left off, Severus Snape is Asst. Headmaster to Dumbledore. Harry Potter is no longer a student, but a colleague, which will be clarified soon. Hermione Granger is pregnant with Draco Malfoy's child, which Dumbledore has alluded to having a great destiny for the House of Slytherin. Paxia Devastarium (my original character), Lucious Malfoy, and Voldemort, were killed by Harry.   
  
Enjoy the journey with me, into refreshingly new, though probably angst-ridden territory. I don't know where this will go. But I know I stand behind every step. If you trusted my judgement in "Corrupt", I don't doubt this will live up to your expectations. Enough with my rambling. 


	2. Nausea Connection

Disclaimer: I own nothing, and owe everything, to the much respected craftsmanship of the one and only J. K. Rowling.   
  
A/N: At the end of the chapter. Please read.  
  
INDEMNITY  
  
Chapter Two  
  
Draco lingered by the door, an outsider. No amount of speaking or touching could comfort her, it was a pain that began within and would expel itself in time. He knew so much, but it did not serve him well to know it. If he could take this away from her, he would. He would be the first to jump up and say "she's had enough, stop this, leave her alone!" but this wasn't a game they were playing, it was a twisted, warped reality that needed facing.   
  
We should discuss this, he thought, or admit it out loud, but how much more admittance did it need? The very first night they had laid together after Dumbledore's revelation, she had smiled at him. Her first impulse was that this had been their child- hers, and Draco's, and that nothing could be more spectacular. Her second reaction had been more haunting.   
  
"To Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Your union is a most potent one, as I am sure you have come to realize. What you have yet to realize is that this very union will produce the next leader of Slytherin House. A pureblood as powerful as a Malfoy, who for the longest reign served Voldemort as nearly next of kin, with the only pure muggle ever to have been sorted into Slytherin House has its own powerful reverberations, repercussions that will define our future. May you serve your purposes well, as you bring the muggle world and magical world together as one. God speed." These were Albus Dumbledore's words. And the echoed deep into her restless nights and early mornings.   
  
He knew she'd been preventative, but what had happened in Voldemort's presence that countered her precautions? Did it matter? What magic was at work here? Natural? Dark? Light? He had been plagued with his own apprehensions, she was far from alone in this journey and he need her to know that.  
  
"Why are you so scared?" he asked her. The single most ridiculous, unwillingly callous, cruel question he could have ever posed, but he wanted to know what she would say.  
  
Her eyes were cold as ice, sparkling. "Because you don't feel what I feel."  
  
"I know what you feel."  
  
"No, love, you know what we feel, inside our minds. But you, and the others, they don't know how I feel, inside my body. There's someone growing inside of me, and it thrills me and scares me, because I don't know what went wrong. I don't know why its there, all I know is that when I conceived, it wasn't in bed with you. I've never known another, Draco, I swear this to you. But I'm scared this isn't yours," she shook at her own confession. It was the first time in this short time that she had to contemplate and verbally express her most desperate vulnerability.   
  
"You're right. I don't know what it feels to have someone inside of me. But I know that fear. I live with it when I look into your eyes. But I refuse to let that hurt me, because this child is ours regardless. It is mine, Hermione, because you are mine."  
  
"I don't want this. These questions. I don't Draco, I don't," she sobbed into his shoulder. He had taken several strides to come to stand next to her, and then sat down on the floor, pulling her onto him. He held her there, her head on his chest, his chin on her crown, stroking her soft, wet skin with his thumb. He treasured her, and knew the honesty with which she spoke those words. It scared them both.  
  
~~~^~~~^~~~@  
  
It had been two short weeks into her pregnancy. She had returned to classes, beaming. Some of the students had heard and understood Dumbledore's words in the Great Hall that fateful morning, the calm after the storm, others had refused to believe. It couldn't be said she was the first to blossom into motherhood within these walls, certainly they weren't all virginal or careful, but she was the first to have been acknowledged in public, and apparently, to her own surprise. How had he known? No one questioned it. This was Dumbledore. It was just accepted.  
  
Her smiles towards the others were more maternal. Protective, and loving. She was relieved to have survived the ordeal with lover and friend intact, and came from the experience sobered that though she had her moment of weakness, Voldemort was defeated, and Draco's final pressures from his father would cease to be.  
  
That night in February, as they stripped their clothes for sleeping garments, Draco cried out in pain. He grabbed his wrist, and shot the most boyishly scared look he had ever created straight into Hermione's eyes. Her heart leapt.   
  
He'd wanted to deny it, but the words wouldn't come. They had both witnessed his inception into that world, but that was over now. They didn't think of it. She hadn't even seen it, she didn't need to know it was there- a reminder. But now she was perched at the edge of the bed, holding her hand out to him.  
  
He extended his wrist, swollen, blistering. The Dark Mark.   
  
"You- you're his."  
  
"It can't be- he's gone, Hermione. He's dead, Harry killed him!"  
  
"Then why is it burning Draco? Why is he summoning you?"  
  
"I don't know," he whispered. The searing pain had stopped. It was just one wave of heat, just to tell him it was there. But now he'd instilled a fear in them both. Maybe this wasn't over....  
  
He coaxed her into bed, telling her he would see what Snape had to say the next morning. Promising that whatever it was, it wasn't an immediate concern that couldn't wait the night, but she suddenly felt ill. She excused it as typical nausea, it was the baby, she hadn't felt well all day, and ran to the bathroom. Coughing, gagging, she heaved her sudden sickness and washed her face, banishing tears. This would be the first of many violent episodes. None natural. She knew that from the start. This child, this thing inside of her.... this was making her ill. It wasn't just her's and Draco's....  
  
She returned to the bedroom they now shared. It was the Head Girl's room, a position she resigned to Parvati Patil upon learning of her new situation, but she was allowed to remain in it, and Draco was granted permission to move in. He was straining to sleep. She moved the comforter over his body, and he relaxed at bit at her touch. Turning to the door, she wearily pushed open the portrait, and silently stalked to the dungeons in nothing but Draco's Quidditch shirt and shorts that disappeared under it. Her socks softened her steps, and she roamed each corridor with bated breath.   
  
Pulling open the heavy door to her Potion's classroom, knowing that Snape was but two doors away, behind his office, she peered into the darkness. There, behind his desk, next to a bubbling cauldron, was his locked store cabinet. She fingered the lock, twisting it to examine the metal, and it suddenly fell open. She looked at the cauldron, surmising that he was still awake, preparing a lab practical.   
  
She quickly set to work, improvising a potion she was sure Professor Snape would never approve of, hoping to Merlin it would work. From his stores she removed three snaking, twisting vines of Devil's Snare, powdered root of asphodel, powdered bicorn horn, knotgrass and ginger. She worked quickly to make sure Snape never discovered her, slicing the Devil's Snare into squirming slithers of green, measuring enough bicorn horn dust to equal the amount of Devil's Snare, a touch of asphodel to numb her pain, knotgrass for consistency, ginger for flavor. She reached again into his closet, removing a wad of gillyweed and squeezing its water into the small bowl to which she had added everything else. She stirred twice clockwise, and thrice counter- clockwise to ensure the plant had been coated. Finally, she tipped the concoction past her lips, choking on the slime.   
  
It was working, the asphodel numbing her lips, her throat, her limbs. The Devil's Snare tore from its liquid bindings and reached her stomach, creeping and binding her organs. The bicorn horn, powered by the instinct of the flesh-eating bicorn, consumed her few remaining gasps, and the gillyweed drowned her from within......   
  
Hazy, she slipped to the ground. Voices, drowning, silence, hazy, can't....breathe....  
  
"Hermione? HERMIONE!" glancing at her disorderly mess and the displayed ingredients, he tore through his stores and grabbed five bezoars, and several ladles full of the boiling liquid in his cauldron. Dissolving the stones in a glass with the Mandrake Restorative Draught, he grabbed her convulsing face, prying her teeth apart, and poured the contents into her throat. She gagged, and spluttered, but held her so that she had no choice but to swallow. Slowly, the blueish tinge that had begun to overwhelm her, blushed again to life. Her gaping eyes relaxed, and her spasms slowed. The bezoar had broken the spell of the bicorn horn, and gillyweed. The fire-heat of the liquid had burned the Devil's Snare, and the restorative draught had returned her lifeless body to health.   
  
As she lay there, breathing, limp but healthy on the ground, he wondered what she was trying to do. Devil's Snare? It traps your arms and legs, slowly choking you to death. Surely she knew this. And Bicorns were known as flesh-consuming creatures. Even if she hadn't known that, the only potions which used its powdered horn were those used in antidotes. She hadn't the gills, so she did not consume gillyweed, but the liquid would have been enough to convert her lungs from the ability to inhale oxygen......  
  
Suddenly he knew.   
  
She had attempted an abortion.   
  
Severus's face paled to a supernatural whiteness. She lay there, a child, ready to rid herself of her own life for the sake of killing the child she would bear. He left her to summon Dumbledore, who appeared moments afterward. They called for Madam Pomfrey, who managed to bring her to the Hospital Wing for later visitation by Draco.  
  
~~~^~~~^~~~@  
  
Draco recalled the moment he reached her bedside. She was weak and sleeping. When he asked what had happened, Dumbledore stepped back to reveal a shaken Potions Master. Draco had always esteemed Severus like a second father, and now he knew it to be so. He would be the one to guide the young Malfoy now. Much as the late Sirius had been to Harry Potter. And so Draco and Hermione, rather than remaining in his debt, were asked to refer to him as Severus, not just a detached Professor, but a personal source to be there when needed.   
  
~~~^~~~^~~~@  
  
Hermione woke to sympathies. She never spoke of the incident, chose to pretend it had never even occurred. But Severus knew. That was all that mattered. He knew she was serious, and furthermore, able. She never apologized, and was never forgiven. It was the deepest state of denial and they all played along.  
  
~~~^~~~^~~~@  
  
Her fears seemed to be confirmed, however, when the sleeve covering the arm he raised to stroke her face slipped to his elbow. She could see his skin, burning, though he never mentioned the pain again. There was a direct correlation between his Dark Mark and her rising sickness and it was not coincidence or natural. When they had brought this news to Severus, he could only admit that his own Mark was burning, too. But there was one person they had not considered.  
  
"We have to see Harry," Draco whispered to her. Hermione began to quiet, and her tears greatly subsided. A dawning realization came over her, and she searched his pale, blue eyes.   
  
"We have to go to class. I was with Harry last, I'll return and gather my things and talk to him," she raced to stand, then began to swoon.  
  
"Steady, love. You don't have to go back to classes now."  
  
"Draco, you promised you would never let me go. Please remember that I swore I would never leave you. Trust me when I say I need you more than ever," she spoke as if inhabiting another personality. A truer mark of instability he had never seen, and it scared him. She was two women, fighting, one for life, one for relief. What happened that night?  
  
He kissed her, firmly, and pressed his forehead to hers. "I will not leave you. And you will not leave me. Let's go see Harry."  
  
They turned to the door as Severus was entering. They smiled to him, sad smiles of current victories in oncoming battles, and he let them pass through without a word. Twisting through the crowded halls, Draco held a protective hand around Hermione, as though she were made of glass. The passed Filch cleaning her forgotten mess, the robe somehow removed. As the next class, presumably second-years, was entering, the couple made their way to the desk, and Harry Potter turned in his chair to greet them.  
  
"I'd been wondering when you'd return, Hermione. And I'd been wondering if you would ever speak to me again, Draco. What can I do for you?" obviously attributing her absence to morning sickness, Harry smiled warmly on his friends. But it wasn't a smile reminiscent of those he'd shed in early January, careless, innocent. It was hardened, older. Substantially subdued. He seemed to have aged twenty-years, no wondered he'd been allowed to join the faculty.  
  
"This is private, Harry. Can we see you in your office?" Draco requested.  
  
"Of course. Class? The discussion on Dangerous Beasts will continue today, please gather your notes for presentations commencing in less than fifteen minutes," returning his attention to his guests, "right this way."  
  
Harry's office was a definite cause for mood alteration. Quidditch posters covered the walls, he was obviously a tad wistful that he could now only referee. The colors were gloriously Gryffindor, Godric's sword from their second year in a case on the wall, a picture of the four Tri- Wizard Tournament competitors framed over the mantle of his fireplace, and a collage of assorted Daily Prophet clippings about Sirius. No single shred of pompousness in the residence of the Boy-Who-Lived. He was still a kid, too. Still just seventeen.  
  
"Do you remember that night, Harry? I got the Dark Mark, Hermione wasn't pregnant, and Voldemort was killed. Then the next morning, everything is upside down and two weeks later, my little tattoo is burning up. Snape said his was as well. What happened that night, Harry? Tell us. For my sake. For Hermione's sake," the door had shut and Harry was pummeled by questions. Heavy questions with thick consequences.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Harry recounted the events of that night, as though it had all just been an amazing movie. He recounted his and Hermione's inabilities to be scarred, how they were brought to the fore-front. They were about to be killed when Paxia dove to save Harry, and Draco went for Hermione. When Paxia was killed, Harry told, much to their disbelief, how they were bled to revive her, and that when he had killed her, when all was said and done, Severus had used the blood seeping from Paxia to return Draco and Hermione back to life.   
  
"I don't know if this is going to help you, its just a theory based on what I know and what you've told me, but if being branded by Voldemort connects you to him, which it obviously does or else he wouldn't be able to summon you, and Draco was branded before he was bled, and then your respective bloods were poured back into you, then perhaps....."  
  
"Yes?"   
  
"Perhaps that child holds the same ability as the Dark Mark."  
  
~~~~~^~~~~~^~~~~~@ RWT  
  
I certainly didn't expect to write that much, but it all sort of came out. In the next chapter, I'll be dealing with Snape a bit more, he suffered losses as well, and general fears within the Slytherin community.  
  
I know this is very dark, I don't expect there to be much light in it, but who knows? Please review with any comments or questions, or email me privately with the subject heading "Indemnity" at behold_the_rosewiththorns@hotmail.com. Also, it should be noted that all facts are cross-referenced at the Harry Potter Lexicon, though I've taken certain liberties, such as with the Mandrake Restorative Draught and gillyweed juice. 


End file.
